The file is titled "Work in progress," Parker explained, a reminder that it will always grow. That, as she puts it, "cities are never finished."

In a system where term limits cap elected officials at six years, City Hall veterans joke that new council members spend their first year finding the bathrooms and their sixth getting ignored by bureaucrats happy to wait them out.

Parker, however, spent six years on the City Council, then six as city controller, Houston's elected financial watchdog. After nearly four years as mayor, she is Houston's longest-tenured elected official since voters approved term limits in 1991. She is seeking a final two-year term on Nov. 5.

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Institutional knowledge is particularly useful for someone with Parker's technocratic leanings. The introverted former bookstore owner acknowledges she is excited by tweaks to internal city operations no citizen will ever see.

"I just love the minutiae of running the city. There are hundreds of things that we could do better, and I'm just popping them off one after another as soon as we can find them," she said. "For the first time, in this year's budget, we created a line item for maintenance, renewal and replacement of our facilities. You can't say that's a legacy item, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now, it's going to be impossible, I think, for a future mayor to say, 'We're not going to line-item this again.' And, hopefully, we won't be in the condition that I was when I came in and we had all these facilities that you had years of deferred maintenance, falling apart. Those are the kind of things - that's why I came to government."

Her top challenger, former City Attorney Ben Hall, criticizes that approach, calling Parker a manager, not a leader. Parker spends too much time tinkering with pet projects, he said, while failing to plan for looming financial problems or to craft visionary policies to ensure the city's continued growth.

Even if Hall's criticism is true, Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said, Parker's results at the ballot box speak for themselves. "It's a credit to her that she has been able to have such success while clearly positioning herself much more as a technocrat than as a charismatic leader," Jones said.

Roots in Spring Branch

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Her family moved a lot - Mississippi, Germany, South Carolina - but it was her return to Houston in 1974 to attend Rice University that set the stage for her public life. Parker learned to embrace her sexuality, becoming a lesbian activist on campus, organizing a student group for gays after graduating, and joining what now is the Houston GLBT Political Caucus.

Parker, then 30 and an economic analyst for Mosbacher Energy, was elected to lead the caucus in 1986, on the heels of Houston voters rejecting a law protecting gay city employees' jobs. Fallout from the vote and the emerging AIDS epidemic fueled bigoted rhetoric. Politicians shunned the group's endorsement. Parker's tires were slashed, and she faced death threats.

Some in the movement favored protests, but Parker was more comfortable at the negotiating table.

"I'm never going to be someone out at the front of the parade leading that kind of charge," Parker said. "But organizing the battle plan? Absolutely, I was always there."

Her activism grew beyond gay issues in 1990, when as a new home­owner in east Montrose, her neighborhood faced a string of arsons; she and fellow residents decided to form a civic club while standing outside one night, watching a house burn. The same year, a tax consultant named Kathy Hubbard stopped by Parker's bookstore, Ink­lings, looking for clients. Twenty-three years later, the couple has two adopted daughters, Daniela, 22, and Marquita, 18, and a son, Jovon Tyler, 37. A god-daughter, Sherry Allen, 19, also lives with them.

Parker first ran for City Council in 1991, and was soundly defeated by incumbent Vince Ryan, now Harris County Attorney. In her next try, she finished third among 19 candidates in a 1995 special election, the same year she became president of the Neartown Association, a coalition of Montrose-area civic clubs.

In 1997, Parker earned 58 percent of the vote in a runoff for an at-large seat and became the first openly gay member of the Houston City Council.

"You can stay at the table and mediate or you can step up, run for office and try to make a difference. She was the person that stepped up and did that," said Sue Lovell, a fellow activist in past decades who served in public office with Parker in recent years. "The way you change things is you ultimately end up at the table where the decision-making is done, and that's what Annise did."

History as an activist

Those who served with Parker on the City Council say her legislating approach echoed her activism.

Parker's experience as a neighborhood leader put her in the middle of a 1999 fight over the city's development rules, recalled former Councilman Chris Bell. Neighborhoods opposed the proposed increase in housing density, but Parker was pragmatic in backing their views, ultimately supporting a compromise.

"Most things that get pushed forward by an administration are likely to pass; the real question is what is it going to look like after it is passed?" Bell said. "You can either be way out front in trying to kill something, recognizing that probably isn't going to have much impact, or you can sit back and draw a line in the sand and say, 'We're not going to negotiate on any point,' or you can try to be a facilitator of debate and negotiation, and she saw her role as more the latter."

Parker did not always seek compromise, said former Councilmen Bert Keller and Rob Todd, conservatives whose views often differed from Parker's. She had confidence in her logic, they said, and in her ability to sway colleagues with a better-reasoned argument.

When the council debated extending benefits to domestic partners of city workers, Todd raised concerns about one roommate extending benefits to another when the two were not partners. Parker showed him what other cities and companies had done to prevent fraud.

"Instead of her simply counting me out, she came to me with concrete ways to address my concerns," Todd said. "It's a proposal that would have a direct impact on her personally and you would ordinarily think she'd have her emotions all wrapped up in it, and she didn't. It's hard not to respect somebody who is capable of rising above their own personal stake in something to make a case for it based on reason."

Keller recalled one heated cloakroom spat after he accused Parker of opposing an item in exchange for a political reward. "She argued with me on philosophy: 'This is what I believe, this is not going to change, this is who I am, what's your next question?' " he said. "She never shied away from a debate or an argument on an issue."

Former Councilman Mike Sullivan said the mayor's trust in her own research and logic often went too far.

"A lot of time I was arguing with her over nonsensical points that, frankly, were nothing more than her desire to control absolutely everything possible. I don't think it's about the power of the mayor, I think it's truly Annise Parker's method of working," he said. "It goes back to thinking she understands more about an issue than every­one else. She becomes so knowledgeable and so smart in her mind that she can't understand or consider other opinions."

Consistent style

Observers say Parker's style has not changed since moving to the third floor at City Hall.

If there's an exception, Bell said, it may be her restrained approach on gay rights. Nationally, Parker often is seen as the gay mayor of Houston, either as a curiosity by those with deep-red views of Texas or as a rallying cry for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups. Parker, however, has worked to ensure she is seen as the mayor of Houston who happens to be gay. She even watched San Antonio pass a nondiscrimination ordinance before Houston, though she now says she wants to advance such a measure.

"The best thing I can do for my community is to be a great mayor of Houston," Parker says. "That's always been my position."

As for Parker's technocratic approach, Darrin Hall, a former deputy chief of staff who also worked for her predecessor, Bill White, was surprised at the extent to which Parker's senior staff meetings focused on the intricacies of city operations.

"She expects her team to know the business that they operate inside and out, and the deputy chiefs of staff, she expects them to know the business inside and out of each department they oversee on her behalf," he said. "Somebody might call that micro-management. I'd call it an extra set of eyes focused on the operations."

Tendency to delegate

Parker says this approach has prevented scandals on her watch, but her tendency to delegate has generated criticism.

Delegation is only as effective as those asked to do the work, former Councilman Jew Don Boney said.

"I respect her, I actually like her, but I don't necessarily think that some of the people that she has brought into city government around her are the best people. I don't think they've served her well," said Boney, a Hall supporter. "Annise is smarter, in my mind, intellectually than she's governing politically, and I don't understand why, and it troubles me. At the end of the day, I just want the city to work well and to work right."

One example of over-delegation, many observers said, is the Rebuild Houston program, the voter-approved effort to spend billions on street and drainage projects. The program's executive reports not to Parker but to the Department of Public Works and Engineering director. A citizen committee appointed to monitor the program, of which Keller is a member, repeatedly has complained about Public Works officials' foot-dragging.

"The only thing I can say she has been at fault with is just not quite curing it as fast as she should have," Keller said. "She has a lot of confidence in Col. (Dan) Krueger, and he's an amazingly gifted public works director, and I don't blame her for trusting him. She gave him a little bit more time to try and solve this himself than she should have."

Parker defended her delegating style, saying her team has been "remarkably productive."

"I have the ability to be a master of the details and I enjoy that, but the city is too big," Parker said. "I don't have the expertise to run the police department or the public works department or the library system."

Her approach can be a liability at the ballot box, she acknowledged.

"I'm not as strong about communicating the broad strokes as I probably could or should be. I tend to just put my head down and get the work done. It would be easier for me to govern if I learned how to do it better," Parker said. "That said, I do more individual constituent voter contacts than probably my three predecessors combined."

After 16 years in public office, Parker is at peace with her approach. She still says her favorite place in the city is her home, and, "when I'm home, I pull up the drawbridge."

"I'm sure there have been Houston mayors that, when they leave the office, they miss the trappings of the office. They probably miss being able to go to every Astros or Texans game, meetings with presidents, future presidents," Darrin Hall said. "She's going to miss waking up every day and checking 311 calls. Did that to-do item get fixed that a citizen gave her at a neighborhood meeting? That's what Annise will miss the most."